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Halo: Reclaimer- Part 2
Posted By: T. K. Niemann<tkniemann@yahoo.com>
Date: 19 May 2003, 5:45 PM
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Halo: Reclaimer
Part Two- Have Hijacked Ship, Will Travel
Hesher didn't know why he always got the boring jobs; that just seemed the way of things. Whenever there was a boring, repetitive task on the Atonement, it always landed on his lap. Hesher liked to think this happened because he had a reputation for reliability, but he knew that wasn't really true. It was just that he didn't complain as much as anyone else.
Trudging up the loading dock to the vessel while dragging the unwieldy particle scanner behind him, Hesher solemnly swore that he would start complaining more if it got him out of assignments like this. He knew just the right high pitched tones the others used to annoy the lieutenant without angering him. The trick, as he understood it, was to complain and annoy at the same time so he'd be sure to find someone else.
For now, however, he was stuck with such boring and meaningless tasks as scanning a derelict human craft for particle residue. Hesher knew he wouldn't find anything. The important crew members had already been through: the Captain, Pa'Garesh, the science officer, and a bunch of the inky armored Elites. All equipment, weapons, and even the ship's databanks had been forcibly removed by the techs and taken elsewhere for analysis. There was no way anything of interest could be left to find. But he had his orders.
Tapping in the security code he'd been given for the lock on the empty earthling thing, Hesher was rewarded with a wash of stale air from the ship. It stank of humans. He had never seen a live one up close but had smelled the stench of man on warriors fresh from the front. They were filthy creatures, by all accounts. And blasphemous heathens, of course.
Hesher was less than surprised to find nothing at all inside the ship. As he meticulously made his way through the interior he found nothing. Oh, look there, he thought, bits of dirt, fantastic. Particles of explosive materials, how unexpected on a fighter! And what's this, unidentifiable biological residue? Wonderful, just what he always wanted!
Moving further and further into the alien vessel, Hesher only found more and more of the same. He began checking the hidden nooks and crannies in the hopes of find something, anything, different. But there was nothing new.
Deep in the engine room of ship, he found one storage closet still closed. And locked. Since it was sort of out of the way, he though, perhaps the others had overlooked it. Hesher was sure there might be something new and interesting in such a place. Maybe, if he was truly lucky, he would find something important the others had missed.
He had been tugging at the locked closet door for what felt like an eternity before he felt it start to give. His back ridge tingled with anticipation as he flung upon the door.
Striding out of the darkness came a human larger than any Hesher had ever imagined. His head was enclosed in some kind of shell and he held a blocky earthling weapon.
Hesher turned to run.
"H-h-human devil!" he managed to squeak out before some hard smashed down on his neck.
There came next a crunch he vaguely realized were his vertebrae being crushed.
"Well," Cortana whispered in his ear, "at least this part went according to plan."
The Master Chief paused to hide the dead grunt it in the locker along with its scanning device.
"Don't sound so surprised. We did take out a Covenant armada and the Flood, remember?" He moved through the corridors of the Longsword, checking each passageway to make sure that it was free of any other Covenant before continuing.
Coming back on to the Longsword's bridge, the Master Chief kept to a crouch to be certain no one outside the vessel could see him.
He began to reach up to the side of this helmet. "Cortana, I'm going to reconnect you to the Longsword. See if you can discreetly bring its sensors back online so we can see..."
She had no physical form, but the tone of the AI's voice smirked as effectively as lips. "Way ahead of you, Master Chief. Now that we're inside the Atonement-that's the name of this ship, by the way-it's child's play for me to interface with their com channels. This ship's not even on combat alert, so I can monkey around with impunity."
There was a pause. "There. I've triangulated the location of every Covenant within a seventy meter radius from our position using their comlinks. Let's see here... in this hanger there are three elites, five grunts, and three engineers, which I think are jackals of some variety. Two of the elites are in the command station directly behind you, a pair of jackals is inspecting the top of the ship, and one of the grunts is napping in the corner. The rest seem to be working on a coolant system along the far wall."
The Master Chief turned and rose a bit to peer out the Longsword's fore windows. About forty meters from him on a platform stood two blue armored elites, busy at work on a piece of alien technology.
"So," Master Chief said, "you AI constructs are good for something."
"Hey, mister, let's not forget which one of us almost destroyed all life in the galaxy."
The Master Chief crept toward the open airlock. "Touché."
Cortana quickly changed tones. "Be careful. The jackals are somewhere on top of the Longsword. There's a good chance the nearest one will see you if you just walk out."
Slowly and soundlessly, the cyborg crept to the opening into the hanger. His audio sensors picked up the sound of some creature scuttling about above him. The Master Chief glanced as the assault rifle's ammo display out of habit.
Lightly, he reached out and tapped on the side of the hull. After a moment, he tapped again. And waited. He tapped a third time.
This time came hissing alien words.
"My database translates that as 'what the hell's that sound.' If you were wondering."
The Master Chief could here from somewhere above the sounds of footfalls on metal drawing closer. Another hissing sound came from further away.
"The other one said, 'it's probably just that idiot with the scanner,'" Cortana translated.
Moving back into the corridor of the Longsword, the Master Chief waited. Before long, a creature resembling a jackal dropped down from the top of the vessel and began inspecting the doorway. The Chief pressed himself into the shadows of the corridor and prayed that he would take the bait.
The jackal looked once more over the doorway and was about to climb back to his former position when he glanced at the floor. Footprints. His eyes fixed on the Master Chief's new footprints in the doorway. He hissed something to himself and took a step forward.
"Cortana," the Master Chief whispered.
The AI remotely closed the Longsword's doors and the Master Chief rushed at the jackal. Fumbling with a plasma pistol and communication device, the creature was too shocked to defend himself from the armored fist that bashed into his face. It folded to the floor instantly.
"That's one," said the Master Chief as he wiped the violet blood from his knuckles.
The Longsword's door slide open and he moved quickly down the loading ramp.
"Chief, take a left at the bottom of the platform," Cortana directed in his ear. "The other way leads directly in front of the control room. This way, we can sneak over to the sleeping grunt and work our way around the room unseen."
Moving with catlike grace, the cyborg skimmed down the platform. As he moved, the Master Chief kept his assault rifle before him, ready to let lose at any threat. Stealth was the main priority now and his enhanced sight and hearing kept him aware of everything the two elites in the control room and the large group of Covenant did.
So intent was the Master Chief on the other aliens that he almost tripped over the sleeping grunt when he came upon him. The creature murmured a bit.
"Careful," Cortana reminded. "One alarm and this whole plan is toast."
As the little one slept, the Master Chief eased one hand over his snout and the other around back of his neck. A quick twist and the grunt's neck snapped.
The Master Chief assessed his position. The grunt had chosen his napping place well, with two crates in front and the wall behind. He was totally guarded from the sight of anyone in the control platform and most other places in the room. By peaking around one crate, the group working on the two large pipes could be seen about twenty meters away.
"Cortana, what can you tell about what they're fixing?"
"Hmmm..." she replied, "it seems like part of their ship's main plasma drive system, the coolant cycler. The larger exposed tube on the right is taking the heated coolant away from the plasma driver and the one on the left is bringing new coolant in. From what I know of Covenant ship design, the problem we saw earlier could be causing a back up of used coolant. Nothing serious, unless there is an internal leak of hot coolant. But troublesome nonetheless, I gather."
The Master Chief glanced back at the two elites in the command station. "Let's make that a little more troublesome." Leaning down, he took the dead grunts plasma pistol from its holster. He calculated the necessary angle and began checking for the right moment when the elites wouldn't be looking and the group would be in the proper position.
The two in the command station seemed intent on something on their view screens and the group had moved to the left. Perfect. The Master Chief clicked off the pistol's tracking option, took aim, and held down the trigger. Angry green light filled his field of vision and the plasma weapon jerked like a captured snake as it charged. Almost...almost...
"Who's that, there," he heard one of the grunts ask.
He released the trigger.
The bolt of emerald energy screamed through the air before any answer could be framed, slamming into the rightmost coolant tube. There was a moment as the group of Covenant tried to understand what had just happened, silent but for the hiss of the plasma bolt burning into the tube.
"Chief," Cortana screamed, "getting moving now!"
He turned and dashed toward the command station as the heated coolant tube erupted. Plasma coolant rushed into the room as if from an opened fire hydrant, soaking those nearby in the boiling liquid. The grunts and jackal died instantly, but the elite's energy shields kept them alive just long enough for them to understand their horrible fate.
The Master Chief rushed up the exposed ramps to the command station, away from the coolant, but the elites took no notice of him. Their attention was devoted solely to rerouting the superheated plasma coolant and shutting down the leaking pipe so that no more escaped.
Only as he reached the command station itself did the elites seem to stop shouting at each other and look up from their panels. A stream of automatic fire from the Master Chief's assault rifle tore into the first before either realized what he was. They never died easily. The elite dropped to floor the same instant as the assault rifle's empty magazine.
Shaking with rage, the second alien ripped his plasma rifle from its holster and lunged forward. The Master Chief ducked under the powerful blow and rolled behind the creature.
Dropping the rifle as he rolled, the cyborg came to his feat with pistol drawn, striking the elite with the butt of his pistol to weaken its shielding. Then, as it turned to face him once more, the Master Chief set the muzzle of the pistol to the creature's skull and fire.
He was retrieving his assault rifle before the elite's body was through crumpling to the floor. As the Master Chief reloaded the weapon, he kept his eyes on the nearest door, waiting for it to open and issue more Covenant. The door kept still.
Cortana whispered in his ear again, "Those two did us a few favors before you took care of them."
"Meaning?"
"Well, they successfully rerouted coolant flow, so you don't have to worry about this room flooding with 600 degree liquid. The really good bit is that they also issued a warning to other personnel to stay away from this cargo bay because of the leak."
The Master Chief nodded. "Good, that should buy us some time. See what information about this ship you can access from this control station."
It took her only a moment.
"Let's see here...ship's mission briefing, blah, blah, blah, general schematics, good, history, yada yada...Whoa! Chief, you would not believe how freely I can move through their internal networks. They never dreamed an AI like me would get in here, especially while the ship wasn't on alert! I can get you everything you need from right here. In fact..." There came what sounded like a giggle from her.
"What is it?"
"Except for a few key blocks..." she giggled again, "I could run this whole ship! These guys don't know the first thing about internal security. Even if they went up to full combat alert right now, I doubt they have a firewall that could completely lock me out."
The Master Chief thought for a moment.
"Where would you need to be to have unrestricted access to the ship's command functions? If it were possible."
"Engineering," Cortana answered instantly. "If you plugged me in at engineering, I'd have total access to all of the ship's systems. Only the captain himself would be able to override my control, and even then only on matters of navigation."
The cyborg salvaged plasma grenades from the dead elites and rose to his feet, looking once more to the doorway.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking," the AI asked.
"Which way to engineering?"
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